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The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

urbanists.social

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Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#2
I'm curious how this will play out for BlueSky with some fundamental human readability vs. decentralization tradeoffs such as the ICN naming tradeoff (http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/ICSI_naminginco...) and Zooko's triangle. Often folks point to biometric binding for DID's to get around Zooko's triangle, which is problematic from a privacy/trust standpoint.

Other systems such as Mastodon avoid running into these problems because of direct and implicit use of DNS for the namespace. (And use of DNS embedding in DIDs ends up undermining the value of flat naming.)

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#3
> It turns out using Git, which is almost always used with a centralized 'remote', to do federation, which needs to be weakly consistent, IS A BAD IDEA!!!!!

Given that a user owns their feed, I'm not sure why this is a bad idea?

I want to take this critiques here seriously but there's not a ton to grasp onto. It definitely didn't feel great that AtProto built from bare ground, reinvented json-schema & OpenAPI for no reason. But ultimately this is one of a number of grievances that feels like doesn't really matter. It's stupid & dumb but in the end it doesn't matter. It's hard to tell which of these points really have hard & real impact. And which are just bias.

The general feeling is an unencumbered letting out of biases, which makes it harder to trust.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#4
With all that screaming from a user on the main competing network, I really need to hear a response from the Bluesky team to form an opinion here. And understand better why this guy is so upset about this destined-to-fail network to curse and foam about it.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#6
> I think the fundamental reason why we keep seeing more and more bullshit protocols and projects pop up like this is one fundamental mindset: a refusal to attribute the problems of the modern internet solely to capitalism.

I mean, I'm sure they have some points in this ranty thread of toots, but it's hard to take it serious when it ends up blaming it all on capitalism (which, I hear you brother, I'm no fan either) and it's FILLED WITH SHOUTING FOR NO GOOD REASON.

Sometimes, when you feel strongly about something, it's useful to write a first draft, and come back to it after cooling down for a day or two, and rewrite it to be more nuanced.

The AT Protocol has many flaws, like any protocol, that much is evident. But I don't think this toot-thread gives a accurate view of those flaws. It also doesn't seem to consider that all these different protocols make different tradeoffs, and none of the protocols try to be "one protocol to rule them all". They are simply better at some things, and worse at others.

> Also I don't care if I'm spreading FUD or if I'm wrong on some of this stuff. I spent an insane amount of time reading the docs and looking at implementation code, moreso than most other people.

> If I'm getting anything wrong, it's the fault of the Bluesky authors

This is a really disappointing way of reviewing things, I hope that it doesn't become more popular, because no one actually learns anything from it. It ends up being just a rant, but masqueraded as education.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#7

Any other embedded programmers or older people that remember what an AT protocol really is confused every time they see a story about Bluesky?

I was just about to post that this article isn't about the AT modem commands.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Serial_Programming/Modems_and_...?

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#8
post #3

> It turns out using Git, which is almost always used with a centralized 'remote', to do federation, which needs to be weakly consistent, IS A BAD IDEA!!!!! Given that a user owns their feed, I'm not sure why this is a bad idea? I want to take this critiques here seriously but there's not a ton to grasp onto. It definitely didn't feel great that AtProto built from bare ground, reinvented json-schema & OpenAPI for no…

My limited understanding of the problem about git as the basis for user data storage is that it then would expose the complexity of git rebasing and the rest via federation. Git is great with a centralized remote (like I believe the original post is getting at) but less so in a federated setting.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#9

Any other embedded programmers or older people that remember what an AT protocol really is confused every time they see a story about Bluesky?

To be fair, anyone who's worked with cell modems knows that the other AT protocol is also an obtuse crock of shit.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#10

Any other embedded programmers or older people that remember what an AT protocol really is confused every time they see a story about Bluesky?

Yep, definitely right there with you on this one. Every time I think oh this will be an interesting blast from the past, followed by bah, get off my lawn...
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